The 'most boring' son

Paddock was the oldest, and least angry, of four boys growing up in the 1950s, said another brother, Patrick Benjamin Paddock II, 60, an engineer in Tucson, Arizona. Stephen Paddock was born in Iowa, the home state of their mother, Irene Hudson.

"My brother was the most boring one in the family," Patrick Paddock said. "He was the least violent one in the family, over a 30-year history, so it's like, Who?"

Their father, Patrick Benjamin Paddock, also known as Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was mostly absent, living a life of crime even before the boys were born. A 1969 newspaper story described him as a "glib, smooth talking 'confidence man,' who is egotistic and arrogant."

His rap sheet was long and included writing bad checks, stealing cars and robbing banks. He was on the FBI's most wanted list. The agency described him as an avid bridge player, standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 245 pounds, who "has been diagnosed as being psychopathic, with possible suicidal tendencies."

Stephen Paddock learned resourcefulness and self-reliance from an early age. In 1960, when he was 7, his father went to prison for a series of bank robberies, and the family moved to Southern California.

The boys' mother raised them alone on a secretary's salary, the younger Patrick Paddock said. The brothers would fight over who would get the whole milk. Powdered milk, less tasty but cheaper, was the norm. Their mother never explained where their father was.

"She kept that secret from the family," Patrick Paddock said.

Stephen Paddock graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic Senior High School in the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1971, according to a Los Angeles Unified School District official. Richard Alarcon, a former Los Angeles city councilman, who lived near the Paddocks, said their neighborhood was working class, with a Japanese community center and tidy ranch houses bought with money from the GI Bill.

Alarcon took a science class with Paddock and remembered him as smart but with "a kind of irreverence. He didn't always stay between the lines."

He recalled a competition to build a bridge of balsa wood, without staples or glue. Paddock cheated, he said, using glue and extra wood.
"Everybody could see that he had cheated, but he just sort of laughed it off," Alarcon said. "He had that funny quirky smile on his face like he didn't care. He wanted to have the strongest bridge, and he didn't care what it took."

Paddock spent his 20s and 30s trying to escape the unpredictability of poverty. He worked nights at an airport while going to California State University, Northridge, his brother Eric said, and then at jobs with the Internal Revenue Service and as an auditor of defense contracts. But it was real estate that ultimately lifted Paddock to financial freedom.

In 1987, he bought a 30-unit building at 1256 W. 29th St. in Los Angeles, near the University of Southern California, according to property records. Eric Paddock said the buildings they bought were not "Taj Mahals, but they were nice, safe places."

Crucially, they were excellent investments: Stephen Paddock more than doubled his money on his California holdings, which included at least six multifamily residences, according to property records. He made money in Texas, too. In 2012, he sold a 110-unit building in Mesquite, outside Dallas, for $8.3 million.

He was a good landlord. He kept the rents low, responded promptly to his tenants' complaints, learned all their names and made sure they were happy. When one reliable tenant complained about a rent increase, he took half off the difference. He designed the ownership structure so his family would profit and installed his mother in a tidy house just behind the apartment complex in Mesquite, Texas.

Paddock had an apartment in the complex, but he mostly lived elsewhere. Despite having been married twice, the apartment looked like a bachelor pad, said Todd Franks, a real estate broker with SVN Investment Sales Group in Dallas. "What you would expect from a 25-year-old single guy."

To Franks, Paddock stood out because it was unusual for the landlord of a property that size to pay such close attention to the day-to-day running of his complex.

"He was frustrated by people who did stupid things," Franks said.

He was also willing to fight to defend what was his. During the riots in Los Angeles in the 1990s, he went to the roof of an apartment complex he owned in a flak jacket and armed with a gun, waiting for the rioters, Franks said.

Though Paddock might have adopted an accommodating attitude toward his tenants and dressed casually Paddock was focused and astute when he made deals.

"He was a tough negotiator," Franks said. "He wanted his price. His terms. He was a very savvy businessman."

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